Vengeance in Blood (Book 2): Tribulations (10 page)

Burning with curiosity, Tiffany stood and walked over, taking the notebook. “It’s an empty threat he said trying to get me to fear him,” Kenneth said, wrapping his arms all the way around her and pressing his body next to hers.

“Those are our babies—” Besseta started when an explosion knocked them both down.

Hitting the floor hard, Kenneth never let Besseta go, holding her tight against him. He looked over at the dogs to see them looking around, wanting to know what happened. Then he heard a faint scream below him. “Hope she doesn’t kill him,” Kenneth mumbled. “You okay, baby?” he asked.

Besseta looked around as the notebook hit the floor beside them. “Never seen anyone move that fast in daylight,” she said and looked up at Kenneth looking down at her. “I’m tough, remember?”

“I know, but you’re still my baby,” he said, kissing the top of her head and letting her go.

Standing, Besseta bent down, picked Kenneth up, and put him on his feet. “Why did you do that?” she asked.

“Wanted to know if we could count on her,” he said, climbing back in his chair.

“She would’ve done it,” Besseta said, climbing back up beside him. She watched him eat and looked at his bruises. “We need to take a break before you get hurt,” she said.

Glancing at her as he ate, he informed her, “Ah, no we don’t.”

“Baby, even Tiffany was shocked looking at the bruises,” Besseta said as she reached over to caress the side of his face.

“I wear these with honor,” Kenneth snorted and heard another faint scream below them. “Didn’t think you could make a man scream that loud,” he admitted.

Sighing, Besseta mumbled, “I’ll try to be more careful.”

He grinned. “Try it, and I won’t wash your back for a week.”

Leaning over, Besseta kissed his shoulder and laid her head on it. “I love you,” she told him.

“Love you too, baby,” he said, finishing his plate. He grabbed the notebooks and picked up Besseta, heading to the living room. “Bonnie, Clyde, come,” he said, walking out of the kitchen.

Sitting down on the couch with Besseta on his lap, Kenneth opened the notebooks and pulled out a pen as the dogs jumped up. Besseta read along with him as Kenneth made notes. It was ten minutes later when the front door opened and Tiffany walked in with a regal strut. “How did you open the door the first time and close it without shattering the whole door?” Kenneth asked, not looking up.

“With my mind,” Tiffany said, sitting down on the other end of the couch.

“Is he still alive?” Besseta grinned.

“Oh yes,” Tiffany nodded. “I nailed him to the wall.”

Kenneth looked up. “What did you use that could drive into granite blocks?”

“Railroad spikes I found down there,” she said, reaching over and petting the dogs.

Besseta looked at her and noticed her olive complexion was much darker. “Did you ask him anything?”

“Oh yes. He admitted to it and said he killed a family’s dog once after he tied them up to get them to talk. He made the little girl cry as he stabbed the dog, then he stabbed the little girl after the dad talked,” she said.

“Baby, get your computer, and see what you can find out about the League, and tell Maliki you need to talk,” Kenneth said, making notes.

Before the last word was out of his mouth, Kenneth saw Besseta sit down with her laptop. “Just what am I looking for?” she asked.

Knowing Besseta had just run downstairs and returned, Kenneth still couldn’t help but be amazed. “Satellite images of those places we have found out about for starters, and you need to empty those accounts you transferred from our friendly hit man.”

Picking up her book, Tiffany sat back, and Bonnie jumped over to her. “What about me, Kenneth?” Tiffany asked.

“Would you mind if I ask you some more questions about yours and Besseta’s world?” he asked.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s the same world you live in.”

Grabbing a pen, Kenneth turned to a new page. “Maybe but never in my wildest dreams would I have figured vampires, werewolves, and incubi walk the Earth,” he admitted.

“That is the problems with humans,” she said, closing her book. “They see something and try to explain it away and not try to understand it.”

“Not going to argue that,” he said. “I know you haven’t talked with werewolves, but have you studied them?”

“Extensively,” Tiffany replied.

“What do they look like?” he asked, holding his pen over the paper. Tiffany opened the leather bound book in her lap and flipped through the pages.

“Till they change, they look like humans,” she said, handing the open book to him. “This is a fairly accurate drawing of them after the change.”

Taking the book, Kenneth set his pen down. The first thing to catch his eye wasn’t the drawing; it was the book. It seemed ancient from the look and touch. Then his eyes fell on the drawing. It truly looked like a man wolf with the knees bending backwards. It had very little hair, and the snout seemed too large for the face.

The arms like the body were very muscular, and the hands had very long claws. Next to the drawing of the werewolf was a drawing of a regular man. All over the page were lines drawn to the werewolf with strange characters drawn on them. “I’m taking these squiggly characters are a language?” he asked, and Tiffany nodded. “Is the picture of the man to show the size difference?”

“Yes,” Tiffany said. “When they stand up, werewolves are three or four feet taller than an average man and weigh twice as much. If you notice, their arms are out of proportion in length to their body. This gives them the ability to run on all fours.”

Kenneth felt a shiver run up his spine. “Yeah, noticed that, but the mouth still holds my attention,” Kenneth admitted, handing the book back.

Not even looking up from her computer, Besseta said, “The damn mouth seemed bigger to me when I saw one up close.”

Taking the book back, Tiffany nodded. “I’m not going to argue on that.”

Picking his pen back up, Kenneth started making notes. “Do werewolves have Leagues?” he asked.

“No, they live in loose packs,” Tiffany told him, closing the book.

“Are there more werewolves than vampires?” he asked.

Gently caressing Bonnie, Tiffany nodded. “Yes, I would say at least twice as many?”

“Do they live a long time?” Kenneth asked.

“Yes, they have a prolonged life as we do. Unlike most vampires, when a werewolf changes someone, they stay around and care for them. That’s where I got the idea from to care for the ones going through change,” Tiffany answered. “But you should know werewolves kill each other off fairly regularly in battles of dominance.”

“And they only change on a full moon, right?” Kenneth asked.

A grin split Tiffany’s face as she chuckled. “No,” she said, and Kenneth felt this was breaking the rules. “They can change at will and even in daylight, but like us, the sun’s UV light greatly decreases their strength. Unlike vampires and incubi, werewolves tend to stay close to each other like a pack. From what I’ve gathered, the rumor of the full moon came about from the pack hunting together on the full moon.”

With his pen rapidly moving across the page, Kenneth asked, “What about their strength in human form?”

“In their human form, they are just as strong as us, but after the change, they are much stronger than us. The one advantage we have is if you hurt a werewolf in human form, they must change to heal. Unlike the movie I saw once, this takes longer than a blink of an eye.” When Tiffany saw Kenneth’s pen stop, she continued. “It takes almost fifteen minutes for the change to take place—turning into the wolf or turning back to a human. This I know for a fact having seen it in Romania.”

Throwing his pen down, Kenneth looked up. “The next thing you’re going to say is Dracula was real.”

“Oh yes he was,” Tiffany said, nodding with a straight face. “At that time, the area he was in was ruled by another League that ruled the area known as Asia Minor. Those are the countries around the Mediterranean Sea. With many kings gathering armies, the League ruled Dracula had to die to protect the secret.”

Feeling totally lost, Kenneth picked up his pen. “This is going to take a while,” he mumbled. “Have werewolves and vampires ever worked together?”

Hearing that stunned Tiffany and made Besseta chuckle. “Not unless they were controlled by the incubi or succubi,” Tiffany muttered. Shaking her head and gathering her thoughts, she cleared her throat. “Werewolves only trust those in their pack, and it’s a bonding trust that they will die for. Other werewolves are viewed as outsiders, but they will still communicate and even fight for them. See, they are clannish and trust, to some degree, others like them.”

Watching Kenneth slowly nod in understanding, Tiffany continued as Besseta closed her laptop to listen. “Vampires aren’t like that,” she told him. “We are never in large groups. The Leagues are the largest concentration of vampires. Not just the five who sit and govern but also those around them who protect and are commanded by the League. An average League will have close to thirty vampires close at hand.”

“Well that’s quite a few,” Kenneth mumbled, writing.

“In southern Mexico, I know for a fact there is pack of werewolves that is over a hundred,” Tiffany told Kenneth, making him jerk his head up. “And that is just one pack,” she clarified. “There are two packs here in America and one in Canada. I’m sure the ones here are bigger, but I haven’t seen them with my own eyes.”

Setting down his pen and notebook, Kenneth sat back. “Just how big an area does a pack control?”

“The pack on the west coast controls from Alaska down several hundred miles into Mexico across to Missouri,” Tiffany told him. The color drained from Kenneth’s face.

“So they do have structure of leadership and defined area?” Besseta asked.

“No, not really,” Tiffany answered. “That one pack is made up of many smaller packs scattered across their territory. The pack I spotted in Mexico was actually one pack.”

Jumping up, Kenneth walked toward the kitchen. “Then we are damn lucky they haven’t taken over the world,” he announced.

“If they weren’t always killing each other in their own packs, trying to advance in rank, they would pose a problem,” Tiffany admitted. “Now as I’ve pointed out, vampires don’t really gather in groups. It seems we don’t trust each other. We like to make a claim to an area and don’t want to share what’s in it.”

“You mean the people in it, don’t you?” Kenneth called from the kitchen.

Thinking before she answered, Tiffany said, “Well, kind of, but like any animal, and that includes humans, vampires want their own territory. I can say there have been more armies gathered throughout history to wipe out werewolves than vampires. Packs get so large they start killing on a large scale. I’m sure you can see modern instances of this, but it’s reported as genocide or civil war.”

Walking back in with a cup of coffee, Kenneth sat back down. “Yeah, I’m starting to see much more now,” he admitted. “Okay, so werewolves and vampires don’t like each other.”

Besseta leaned over. “Baby, let’s clear something up now before you go further,” she told him. “We, and I mean vampires, run away screaming like children from werewolves. They like to eat us.”

Kenneth raised his eyebrows. “Well yeah, that would put a damper on a working relationship,” he admitted. “Do they attack vampires while they are in human form?”

“Not usually,” Tiffany replied. “I’m sure if we made them mad they would, but usually, they just stay away from us and we them. When I’ve tried to talk to them, I usually had to follow them and try to ask questions. Unfortunately, that makes them mad, and they change, and I have to take steps to get away.”

Not liking the fact even Tiffany avoided werewolves once they changed made Kenneth nervous. “Okay,” he said, letting out a long breath. “So werewolves don’t openly declare war on vampires?”

“Not since our two groups lived on the same island, Tepe,” Tiffany responded. “But there, the incubi and succubi kept the peace, or should I say kept their livestock and warriors from killing each other. From the scrolls I’ve read, our two groups have fought since the beginning, and on the lost island, it was the edimmu or vampires that started most wars of conquest over the werewolves. I’m still reading them, so I haven’t found out why.”

Reaching over, Besseta grabbed Tiffany’s hand. “Tiffany, just how many of these scrolls do you have?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I guess a few thousand,” she said, shocking Besseta and Kenneth. “I took as many as I could from the Alexandria library before the Romans burnt it down. I also have several hundred from the Babylonian library.”

Taking a sip of coffee, Kenneth leaned over. “You took a lot of scrolls from the Alexandria library that just recorded history of this lost island?” he asked Tiffany as he just stared at Besseta, stunned.

“Of course not,” Tiffany said. “I didn’t know what was on them when I took them. I just wanted to save what I could. For a week as the Romans fought, I took as many scrolls and tablets as I could. I wanted to intervene in that war, knowing what the Romans were planning, but the one with me wouldn’t allow it,” she finished in a low voice.

Seeing Tiffany’s reaction, Kenneth quickly asked, “I’m sorry, but can you tell me of the incubi and succubi?”